Calories burned during 3 hours of playing

There is no way he burned 600+ calories an hour with such a low output of footwork.

I'm not incredibly physical in my play compared to top juniors, as recently I was obese (30%+ BF, 43.5" waist), but am in much better physical condition now, but am by no means an athlete yet [38.5" waist, maybe low 20% BF now].

I do slightly more steps [10500-11000] than your partner, in 2 hours.  My watch gives me around 600-800 calories for that 2 hour session. That's 5500 steps per hour for 2 hours, vs 3400  per hr for your partner - i mainly warm up, rest 2-3 mins, match, rest 2-3 mins, match, rest 3-4mins, final match for that 2 hour session with longer rests too. Again, I'm not an overly physical player, and I'm not exactly drilling during the warm up. Just normal warm up stuff, but with pushing, and a bit of FH smashing and BH smashing added in there.

So my workrate is around 55% more in those sessions, without accounting for the fact I rested more too per hour. Since I'm doing more work, that'd put me at 900 calories per hour, which is elite athlete level of workout. As in, that's how many calories a 150lb guy (68 kg), would burn if they ran 15 kilometers..in an hour. Which safe to say almost no-one can do, without knowing they are a great runner.

Funnily enough, when i play badminton [doubles] for a 2 hour session [where I'd play around 105 actual minutes], I reach the same step count. I.e. I'm reaching my body's footwork limit, as in both sports I'm identical, although in badminton I'm consistently probably around 10750-11k, where in TT i can be low 10's more often, and i'll know if I'm close to 11.

My average heart rate is higher in badminton though (135-145, vs TT around 120-130). I think in badminton I'm probably taking longer, more explosive steps, and swinging my racquet harder, but in table tennis i feel more tired, as in TT you are ALWAYS crab walking, or in quite a low stance. In badminton, your normal stance is not quite as low/moving doesn't require as much crab walking, hence your muscles in your legs are under a different type of pressure - Doing a plank til exhaustion* [unless you are a freak doing it for 5 mins or something] / doing press ups, doesn't get your HR up at all [20-30 above resting], but it completely tires out your muscles - i think table tennis is the same. Your heart is fine, your legs are not. I certainly cannot do a 3rd hour @ 5500, not unless you let me rest for an hour or more, shower, massage gun and inject some caffeine and put a high level player there [i.e. one that i'll try attack, and hence use more footwork/have longer points with].

I don't pay too much attention to the calorie readings, as its all derived from the HR [in context of your weight] and HR from your watch is not accurate when dealing with non-uniform movement activities that also have a lot of sweat. For running, its good as your have GPS/distance/HR all working in tandem, and running is uniform. For lateral movement, the inventor of the technology herself said its not there yet. Need a chest strap for accurate HR - steps is a much better indicator of intensity of workout.

For further context about why your friend is wrong, i looked at an old, 'long slow' run i did during quarantine to help shed the weight, and 11300 steps, 10km run, burned 833 calories. I somehow doubt doing less steps in TT will burn 1800 calories!

Let me know if you find any good ones! I know in tennis they have a lot of drills in youtube, and just doing more of it and losing some weight, eventually it gets easier...but then you start doing it better and pushing yourself..so it becomes hard again :(.

To be fair, i've hurt the balls of my feet from playing TT or badminton 4 to 5 times a week for the past 5 months [Live in NZ so its safe to do so, thankfully!], so i have an excellent excuse to not do those weight transfer exercises / as explosive footwork! I actually switched to short pips last week, so that's my cheat code..Less footwork required as the points are shorter, and less physicality in the looping. Oh, and far more control, so its nice to not bleed points because you didn't do all of the checklist

Checklist:

- On balls of your feet for serve receive

- After you served, you didn't ball watch and moved into a neutral ready position, complete with balls of feet

- Recovering completely after each point

- Staying low for the entire point, including for service receive.

That said, when I'm recovered and hopefully even leaner, i'm excited to see how having a good intensity of footwork will benefit this new style.

Dude this is too funny, yes that is exactly the annoying checklist to follow ughhhh. Did you switch to short pips on the FH?! I remember you hit quite well with your FH xD...if you did now you can be a Mattias Falck lookalike hahaha...

Yeah, I felt a bit weird going off on the  checklist tangent, but I don't really get to talk about the physical side of the game with too many people in person here. The young / really fit guys don't appear to really think about it and just 'do' what's natural without thought when I ask them about it - most don't even consider fatigue a part of table tennis, even if they've played literally 10 matches and warmed up [mostly high intensity footwork drills] for 3 hours total, every day for 3-4 days in a tournament.

The older guys who are still playing at the top 20 to top 50 level in the country  [aged 55-70] are simply trying to keep as many things stable as possible, and simply conserve as much energy as they feel they can. The only guy who likes talking the physical side, is a 57 year old Olympian, whose physicality in the game is better than all but the best in the country and I don't feel I can generalize too many things as he's the most talented and decorated  NZ  born player ever.

With the short pips, yep, I tried SP for the first time this week. Had been nursing a foot injury and actually played our 2nd division Interclub with it, and the results were beyond my wildest imagination. The opponent was a top 30~ FH Long pips user whom I was competitive, and a FH SP user ranked around #100 whom I dominated.

 Particularly in the doubles I felt I was able to either smash on both wings with 90%+ efficiency/conversion to almost any ball that wasn't below the net, or place pretty much every ball that was played with intent, and receiving even at this  stage is a dream.

 It's lethal, and I don't know why, but the FH pips has made me able to feel the ball a lot better on my backhand, so pushing/blocking/attacking with the backhand is considerably easier - is it because of the weight or pips rubber being thinner overall leading to more feeling? It feels like a cheat code has been put on my BH rubber [same old Omega V tour, just obviously a new sheet] with the amount of feeling and control I have.

All in all it's all very exciting, as I feel as it's a great fit to get off the ground running, I'm sure there will be hiccups soon, but its the off-season now so its fine. I'm confident with what I see that it has elevated my performance ceiling in the future - I'd already improved so much since that last video as I had worked on several things discussed, as well as found things like grip tape and anti-persp on your hands actually allows a heavy sweater to feel the ball and maintain a grip on your racquet, as well as incremental improvements everywhere else.

Yep, Falck was my main inspiration, as well as some older guys who seem to get the job done in terms of winning, even though their game is quite limited - no offence on the backhand, its all out FH attack, and their movement isn't great due to their age [55-60]. Still top 30 and top 55 odd, but I felt I could do what they do, but with a more broad skillset and more physicality - their receiving is too reliant on pips. Just things like having received with normal rubber, and then applying that superior bat angle / timing, to pips has already given me an advantage vs normal pips users who've had that crutch in receiving for a long time, and hence probably haven't experimented / gone as far to improve their receives.

The phenomena I'm noticing on the BH isn't linked to that - even in the BH warmup / various BH exclusive drills i'm hitting so many more loops, blocking with ease and more feeling etc. I'm feeling the ball a lot more. Who knows, maybe its the new freshly glued sheet of rubber. I've been asking around, and one guy whose very experienced said he'd expected that and explained why, but I didn't really understand, and in general I'd like to cross reference something like that - the guy is very experienced with all sorts of TT stuff and very nice, but he does have some odd opinions on some things.

If its the fact I used more glue [I put a coat on, dried for 30-40 mins, another coat, dried, but it still came off. So had to re-glue it with 2 more coats but didn't take the old glue off], maybe I need to use more coats of glue to improve feeling, if its something linked to pips I don't need to bother to put 4 coats of glue and can save even more on weight etc.

If its a weight / balance thing, then it might be I'm able to maneouver my 183~g setup easier than a 195-198g setup, get to the ball quicker, more precisely, and get a better bat angle on blocks and attacks etc. Maybe its several things..  but its really hard to google how pimples on one side affects your play on the other.

Another thing is i'm able to push almost any ball, with a heavy chop and keep it low...far easier. The timing window or something has made it so that this is far more likely to happen, and in general pushing quality has gone up. 

Anyways I'll stop hijacking this thread by making it about myself. In penance, I'd say Falck uses at least 500 calories per hour when playing non-stop, and no-more than 700 unless he's doing some skills Calderano would be proud of !

Guess I am gunna either need to hear it or invest in some good ear plugs until such a time she decides it is good for her to walk with a pack.

I think it depends. A heavier setup is harder to accelerate, but if you have enough power to accelerate, your swing speed will be faster.

You might be thinking about momentum P=mv, and directly proportional to mass. So even at the same bat speed, the heavier setup will impart more momentum to the ball. 

AcudaDave wrote: Just read some interesting articles about reliability of fitness trackers for measuring calories burned. Turns out the heart rate is fairly accurate, but the calorie estimate is off quite a bit. The average inaccuracy was almost 30%, and they all overestimated calorie burn. Apparently it’s very hard for fitness trackers to estimate it because they can’t take daily hormone levels into account, skin tone, amount of muscle, and other variables. This makes sense.

Yes, I'm quite certain this is true for the heart rate devices I have used (from Garmin and from Polar).  I think the biggest factor causing this difference is the ambient temperature.  Coffee consumption before the exercise can do it too.  Also hormones, immune responses, etc. etc. etc.

I've actually tested it directly on my bikes, which have powermeters (ergometers) that allow me to measure the work done turning the pedals, and which can then make a calculation of calorie burn.  I have compared it to estimates made based only on heart rate (in both cases using the same Garmin software and computer device)*.  The calories burned estimated from heart rate alone are almost ALWAYS greater than calories burned estimated from total work that I put through the pedals (power x time), using the same programs and apps.  The difference is larger when it is hot outside.  In August in Houston, they are a lot different (as much as 30%).

Now, the power meter may underestimate calorie burn a little because it only records the work I do pushing the pedals, not the little bit of work I do to maintain posture, or pulling on the handlebars if I am climbing a hill.  But only a little (after all, cycling is not like swimming or Nordic skiing, as someone else noted earlier). 

In the summer power readings may underestimate calorie burn more because there is a definite bioenergetic cost to maintaining your body temperature constant when it is 95 degrees and 90% humidity (your heart works a lot harder).  The power meter won't capture that.  How much?  It can't be measured outside of an exercise physiology lab, unfortunately. In labs people can measure the respiratory exchange ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen consumption and VO2 using a cumbersome face mask and a treadmill or a stationary cycle. 

My distinct impression is that calorie burn estimates based on heart rate are usually too high (certainly on apps and software from Garmin and Polar, the only two I know about). 

*  An app I use called Training Peaks calculates something called a Training Stress Score for every ride I do.  It can make the calculation from heart rate or power.  It is quite a lot higher if I base it on heart rate any time the temperature is above about 85 F, or below about 35 F.  I have occasional days when for some reason my heart rate is just higher and they differ then too.